Transverse
by Corrose
Summary: A series of crossovers between kindred souls in different universes. Ch 2 - Snape, Gajeel - They walk the thankless gray line between light and darkness in order to protect those they love.
1. Wind Sisters

**Title:** Wind Sisters  
**Character:** Wendy Marvell, Lenalee Lee  
**Words**: ~1500  
**Rating:** K**  
Summary:** They cross paths by chance and share dances in the sky, sisters for a brief moment in time.

* * *

**Wind Sisters**

They meet in a dream, in a place without boundaries between sleep and wakefulness.

She's vaguely aware that her Innocence is activated, the Dark Boots swirling streamers of blue power from her ankles, but there don't seem to be any akuma around. Instead, there is a small girl who looks very much like her, standing at her side and looking over the peaceful night scenery with a faint smile.

At first, Lenalee thinks that this girl _is_ her, but that can't be right, because at that age, she was chained to a bed with death and an eternity full of forced denial in her lifeless eyes, kept alive by a tube forced sticky and gagging down her throat, and also her hair wasn't that long or that blue.

Then the stranger turns to face her, and Lenalee _knows_ that this girl isn't from her world, knew with the strange but absolute certainty that comes only in dreams.

"You aren't from around here," she asks, and the girl shakes her head shyly. She scrutinizes the slight form carefully, trying to keep her guard up, because recently her dreams have been full of akuma exploding out of the bodies of her loved ones, and she cannot fight them because they wear the faces of her friends; but there is a harmless clarity that comes from this girl, a windblown innocence nearly tangible in the thin air, and she cannot stay suspicious in the face of it.

_The wind itself seems to love this girl,_ Lenalee thought wistfully, watching the air stroke her dark ponytails into winding rivers of raven-blue in the light of the full moon. The girl turns to her and bows quickly, holding out her hand with a grin that reveals slightly-too-sharp canines. Somehow, Lenalee isn't worried.

"My name is Wendy," she says brightly. "What's yours?"

Lenalee takes the proferred hand and shakes it, smiling at the feeling of skin under her fingers, cool and wind-kissed. This dream is very real.

"My name is Lenalee," she replies kindly, and Wendy smiles up at this strange mirror-image of herself in another world and sees kindness and love and a sorrow so deep that even her healing touch cannot break it.

"I'm a dragonslayer," she pipes up proudly, and Lenalee blinks once at the odd word.

"Dragon…slayer?"

"Yup! I'm the Sky Dragonslayer!"

Lenalee smiles. She too knows something about the sky.

"Is that so?" she asks mildly. She pushes off once, the smooth movement of her body translating into an answering blaze of power from her Innocence, and then she is airborne, floating in the wind. Wendy gapes at her in surprise before breaking out into a huge grin, and then she is wrapped in a breathy swirl of air that ushers her off the cliff, leaving her suspended next to Lenalee with nothing by the sky to catch her.

Lenalee smiles at the look of exhilaration on the dragon-child's face, and then with a great push, her boots tap on the waiting air and she is climbing, climbing into the night sky on steps cut from the air itself as her Innocence propels her higher and higher. Wendy follows, arms spread like wings, the air around her gathering at her command to launch her into the stars after Lenalee, who is by now a shadowed silhouette against the moon. She catches up to the comet trail of the Dark Boots, overshoots it and swoops back, laughing, and Lenalee finds that she's laughing too as she extends her hand to Wendy in an invitation.

And then they're dancing in the wind, with only the whisper of the stars to accompany them, and they are so far up in the diamond-studded sky that no one else can touch them.

Lenalee twirls around Wendy, hair swirling about her in the playful breeze that has suddenly gusted to life around them, and Wendy answers with a gleeful leap that has her hanging, weightless in the air, the twin tails of her dark blue hair lifting slowly as if caught in time before drifting to trail in dark streamers across her beaming face. Lenalee responds by taking off into the midnight sky in a burst of blue power. She climbs and climbs, ever higher until the air turns thin and freezing and her lungs strain in the altitude.

_She will break the barrier of this world. She will touch the stars. _

With one final leap, she clears the clouds, settles next to the glowing moon, and here, at the highest point of her leap, she deactivates her innocence, spreads her arms out wide and closes her eyes as her body tilts, inexorably towards the earth. She lingers for a single, weightless moment before passing the delicate balance to begin her headlong descent into free-fall. The wind howls its blustering resistance against her body, whips her hair into dark, streaming banners about her face, and she listens to the sound of her clothes flapping as she gains speed, approaching terminal velocity. Her breath catches in her throat with fear and adrenaline spikes wildly in her blood. What if her boots don't work? What if her Innocence decides to fail her now? _What if, what if, what if…_

She passes Wendy's awed eyes in a blur of downward speed and momentum, and she can _almost_ feel the water on her back when she executes a sharp spin in midair and her Dark Boots materialize with a flash to bring her to a jarring stop mere inches away from the lapping water. She grins, flush with success and hurls herself back into the sky with an exhilarated shout to rejoin Wendy, who greets her with a swirl of wind that uplifts both her body and her spirit. Together, they dance an aerial ballet to an orchestra of stars and a symphony of wind, rejoicing in the shared knowledge that they are both daughters of the wind, sisters in the air.

Their midair rendezvous seems timeless, stretching endlessly into infinity as the clouds swirl overhead in dizzying time-lapse whirlwinds so that they dance as if in a frozen world where they are the only ones in motion, but gradually the wind dies down, and the dark horizon in the distance begins to brighten with the coming dawn, so they descend slowly from the moonlit sky with wind-whipped hair, flushed faces and beaming smiles.

Wendy takes a step forward, but Lenalee lunges forward and catches the younger girl's wrist. The bones are thin and sharp under her hand, and Wendy turns back in surprise.

"Will I see you again?" Lenalee asked breathlessly.

Wendy smiled at her new friend, gently slips her arm out of the tight grasp before replying.

"I'm not sure, since I think I'm dreaming, but if we don't, I'm glad to have met you tonight!"

She extends her small hand again and even as Lenalee shakes it, Wendy is disappearing. She meets the younger girl's eyes and they share one last smile, unspoken understanding passing through them like a shared current as the first fingers of dawn start to peek out over the ocean.

_Friends. _

_

* * *

_

Lenalee wakes up that morning feeling refreshed. She wakes early, right as the sun is rising over the peaks of the Tower, and goes downstairs for breakfast with a bounce in her step. She grabs both Allen and Kanda and crushes them into a hug, breaking up their argument, plants a kiss on both their cheeks, leaving them stunned silent and grabs a cup of coffee to take to her brother, who has most likely been working straight through the night.

She's right, and as he sobs at her feet to try and win her sympathy, she smiles winningly at him and dumps his coffee all over him, letting her mind drift back to moonlit dances in the air with a friend who shares her face, a sister in a different world, a princess of the sky.

Later, as they are besieged upon a ship in the middle of the ocean with the moon thin and mocking above them and nothing but blood and death awaiting them in the clouds, she faces the most terrible opponent she has ever met, and again, she makes that same journey into the sky. This time, there is no joy in the action, only a grim, unbreakable resolution in her beautiful eyes.

Once again, she reaches that heartbreakingly beautiful moment of absolute clarity at the top of the world, and despite the death that knowingly awaits her, despite the pain and terror she knows her friends are facing now, a nameless euphoria grips her as again, she closes her eyes and her body succumbs to the greedy pull of an unnatural gravity.

She whispers her coming death to her Innocence and thinks dimly of a different sea, a different moon and a different sky as she plummets towards the ocean like a brilliant, doomed comet, because in that bittersweet moment, she is, for the last time, a daughter of the air, her hair flowing past her face in burning streams to the tune of the wind whistling her funeral dirge.

* * *

**A/N **- I can't be the only one to see how similar Wendy looks to Lenalee in her new outfit, right? Lenalee is one my fave girls across ANY fandom (my shoe fetish notwithstanding), and her fight with the Level 3 has always been one of my favorite scenes in any manga/anime. EVER.

So of course, with the whole falling out of the sky thing and Wendy being the Sky Dragonslayer and them looking so gosh-darn similar, this thing wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it out. It originated from a picture first, and this fic naturally followed. I hope you liked it as much as I did :)


	2. Silver and Green

**Title:** Silver and Green  
**Character:** Gajeel Redfox, Severus Snape  
**Words**: ~5000  
**Rating:** T (potty mouth Gajeel) **  
Summary:** It must be some sort of fate, that their stories are so similar, but one person's mistakes don't define them, and while redemption comes at a heavy price, it's one that they're both willing to pay for the sake of those they love.

* * *

**Silver and Green**

Severus Snape woke up with an unsettled start, sitting up sharply to find himself fully dressed in a clearing somewhere in the middle of a forest. He got up slowly, rolling into an instinctive crouch, eyes shifting ceaselessly as he tried to determine exactly where he was and what had happened. One hand dove into his wrist holster, surfacing with his wand at the ready, tucked carefully under the trailing sleeve of his robe. After several heartbeats of undisturbed silence, he relaxed marginally and re-holstered his wand, walking carefully into the clearing to ascertain just where he was. He had the sneaking suspicion that he was dreaming, and if Saint Potter had something to do with this, he would _strangle_the brat before hexing him clear into the next dimension – he stopped dead in his tracks.

Right in the center of the clearing, as if he'd merely overlooked him during his meticulous scan of his surroundings, there was a boy.

He was more of a man than a boy, with a bristling mane of black hair that fell heavily over his shoulders down to his waist. Flashes of numerous studs caught the light as he turned to face him, and blood-red eyes, with pupils as slitted as a cat's regarded him with cool calculation, sizing him up. Reflexively, Snape cast the first spell that came to mind.

"Leglimens!"

_A dragon, huge as a mountain and as powerful as a force of nature itself, its looming presence filling the entire entrance of a dark cave with the cool tang of metal. The same cave, empty and forlorn, with half-gnawed bones scattered about, as if vacated in haste. A flash of blue hair, blood and fire and sadistic pleasure. A gentle face framed with blue hair and streaked with blood, eyes bright with defiance and conviction, crumpling with pain before falling slack into unconsciousness. A hand of redemption, offered and taken. The raw smell of ozone and lightning and the exultant redemption that came with the searing pain. Resting on bended knee before a dark madman who laughed with tatters of razor-edged scraps that sang and cut in the air around him and_ – walls like metal shields crashed heavily down around him and pain blossomed in his shoulder, flinging him away from the mental connection with a harsh grunt. He pulled back to find himself pinned viciously to a tree with tight bands of metal that anchored themselves in the trunk and snaked across his arms and chest. His eyes widened as he saw that the source was the boy's arm, which had phased silver with the transformation.

Was this some kind of strange heretofore unseen form of self-Transfiguration? He wondered detachedly, watching with professional interest as the boy pulled the iron rod of his arm back, wordlessly returning the iron skin to a flesh and blood hand. Snape looked down and then back up, expecting the magic to dissipate. The iron bands around him stayed corporeal, holding him firm. He groped instinctively at his wrist holster and came up with nothing. Wandless. Trapped.

The boy was shaking his head, looking dazed. He blinked several times before regaining his equilibrium, whirling around to face Snape with a slit-eyed, dangerous expression, lips peeling back in a predatory snarl.

"Who are you, and what the fuck did you just do?" he asked, crudely. "You were" – he tapped his head – "I've never felt that before. Not even with that shit-for-brains telepath Warren."

Snape snorted. "I am nothing so pathetic or cliché as a telepath. That was simply a form of offensive mental arts" - He considered the boy appraisingly – "which you managed to deflect. Tell me. What kind of Transfiguration was that attack? And where is your wand?" His own fingers clenched reflexively around empty air.

The boy gave him the crudest look of open disdain that Snape had ever seen, and he felt his lip curling as he bristled instinctively. "What the fuck are you talking about?" The boy asked, confusion written into the arch of his steel-pierced eyebrows. "Wand? Transfigures?" He flapped a dismissive hand and turned away. "Fuck, whatever. Shit, where the hell am I? What the fuck has Mirajane been putting into that that crappy bar food?" He degenerated into mumbling, and Snape felt his short temper start to fray dangerously. Speaking slowly, as if he was talking to someone who was slightly slow in the head, he continued.

"I can only assume that you are a wizard, and as such, you must have a _wand_ in order to perform magic, which you obviously just did."

The boy turned back to him with a snort of amusement. "A wand? Gihihi! You think I'm one of those lame item-type mages? Even for some guy in a dream, you're kinda dim, aren't you?" Before Snape's eyes, and obviously wand-free, the boy raised his arm, and the fingers of his hand rippled into a phalanx of shining steel claws.

Although he was reeling at the implications of this strange new type of wandless magic, Snape kept his face cool and expressionless. He did not boggle with his mouth open mindlessly. It was just not done. Instead, he stared closely at the iron gauntlet of claws and scales, trying to apply the concepts of Transfiguration to what he had just seen happen, and came up with no answer. He looked up sharply at the boy, and for the first time, took in the magnitude of iron studs upon his face and arms and apparel.

"Is that a new form of wandless magic?" He asked calmly, and the boy rolled his eyes.

"God. You really are an idiot. Stop going on about the wands. I don't need a goddamn wand to do this." He smiled sharply, a predator's smile complete with pointed fangs, and again, steel scales rippled their way across his hand, his arm, his face and shoulders and chest, until he was completely encased in shining steel armor.

Snape stared. He couldn't help it. His sharp eyes searched again, futilely for a wand he knew wasn't there, because his mind couldn't process that this strange boy could focus such an advanced material-based self-transfiguration without the channeling guidance of a wand. He stared once again at the gleaming steel scales, noticing how they did not hinder movement in the slightest, but instead appeared to be an extension of the body.

"How are you doing that?" He finally asked, and resisted the urge to kick himself. That was a child's feeble question, not the question of a fully-fledged wizard and experienced spy.

The boy fixed him with a strange look. "I'm the Iron Dragonslayer," he said, as if that explained everything.

"That tells me nothing," Snape said, going over the words in his mind. He had not heard of anything about dragonslayers besides a few miscellaneous conversations picked up in the staff room about Muggles wearing metal armor and attacking dragons head-on with little bits of sharpened wood. Laughable. This boy before him stung of unapologetic power of a type he had never seen before. It was impossible that they were of the same ilk.

The boy rolled his eyes and shook his head in resignation, his mane of dark hair rippling behind him. "If you don't know, I'm not taking the time to tell you," he huffed. He glanced into the forest and made a dismissive movement with his head. "I'm takin' off," he said bluntly, heading towards the forest beyond the clearing. He turned his back on Snape, who immediately (and futilely) tried to force his way out of the iron bands. He had no idea where his wand had gone, disarmed after that first Leglimens, but he wasn't going to sit pinned like a sitting duck and wait for something to come along and skewer him, trapped as he was. He jolted in surprise as the boy suddenly reappeared in the clearing as if he hadn't even moved. From the expression on the boy's face, it was clear that he was just as shocked.

"What the fuck?" He said succinctly, staring at the forest edge he'd walked into moments ago. He glanced at the forest and tried again, taking large, purposeful strides towards the trees, only to reappear on the opposite side of the clearing, walking straight into the center as if he'd never left. "What the fuck?" He repeated, baffled. Snape fought the ridiculous urge to snort, but his mouth curled into a smirk as the boy took a running start, only to burst into the clearing once again. What the hell is wrong with this place?" He yelled, obviously frustrated." Oi! I want out! Can anyone hear me?"

He tried several more times, charging pell-mell into the woods, only to reappear in the clearing facing a different direction. After several tries of this, which produced more and more impressive curses, he finally came to a furious standstill in front of Snape, who by now, was smirking like the cat that ate the canary.

"What the hell are you looking at?" the boy snarled.

"An incompetent fool who does not know when he has been beat," Snape replied drolly. To his surprise, the boy cocked his head to one side, appraising him before breaking out into that fanged smile. Snape shuddered a bit and thought of vampires.

"Gihi! You're one to talk, pinned like a fucking fly on the wall, aren't you?" Snape's eyes narrowed and he bit back an oath and strained uselessly for a wand that wasn't there to teach this imbecile a lesson. He was forced to concede that he was still trapped. The boy had been watching him struggle with dark amusement flickering in his red eyes, which had shifted to a sudden understanding that made Snape uneasy. "I get it," he finally said, voice a slow drawl. "_You__'__re_ an item-type mage. That's why you keep going on about that wand bullshit. Without that little stick, you're as useless as a trapped rat, aren't you?"

Snape stayed silent, eyes glittering hatred, and the boy laughed his strange laugh.

"Whatever," he concluded with a smug smirk." I would've used you for target practice before, but" – a myriad of complex emotions flashed across his face – "I guess I'm not that guy anymore." He made one last halfhearted attempt to try and break free, sighing resignedly when he reappeared on the opposite side of the clearing. Finally, he took a seat and sighed heavily. "Well fuck. Looks like we're stuck with each other until I figure a way outta here." Snape's lip curled disdainfully and the boy laughed dryly. "Yeah, well, it's not like I asked to be stuck here with you either, so don't gimme that look."

A heavy silence fell between them, until the boy started absentmindedly stabbing the grass with knuckles turned into blades, the repeated 'thuck, thuck' sounds grating on Snape's nerves.

"Stop that!" He finally snapped. "Can't you at least think in peace?"

The boy chuckled and very predictably, didn't stop. "What. Am I bothering you? Why the fuck do you even care? You're not even real."

That gave Snape pause. He looked down at himself, his hands, his robes, and then back at the boy.

"Of course I am real," he finally said. "_You_ are the one who doesn't exist."

The boy looked up, eyebrow cocked scornfully. "Yeah?" Abruptly, he nicked himself with one of the blades that sprouted out of his knuckles, holding up his bleeding palm to show Snape." Look real enough for you?" He licked the blood off and spat it out, his face grim. "Sure feels real to me."

His red eyes narrowed and he eyed Snape with a sudden calculated stare that made Snape distinctly uncomfortable. "Who the fuck ARE you anyways? Messing with my head?" He stood up abruptly, his forearm shifting smoothly into a wicked-looking blade. "Are you the reason I can't leave this fucking forest? Is this some kind of test?" He strode over to where Snape was still pinned to the tree, arm drawn back horizontally, in the purposeful movements preceding a killing stab, and Snape gritted his teeth, meeting the boy's red eyes head-on in defiance. He'd died in his dreams before. The worst that could happen was to wake up. It was not as if his reality was much better.

There was a tense moment of silence where tension sparked between them like electricity. Finally, the boy lowered his sword-arm and turned away to kick the ground, cursing colorfully. Snape let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding, relief flooding him despite the irrationality of the whole situation. This was a _dream_, for god's sake. He watched coldly as the boy stalked back to the center of the clearing and flung himself down, back turned fixedly away. Another silence descended between them as Snape mulled over the memories he'd seen during his initial Leglimens. One in particular kept on resurfacing.

"Who was that man?" He finally asked, rather stiffly. "The man in black."

The boy didn't even turn around. "Why do you want to know."

Snape's mouth twisted as he thought of groveling on bended knee before his own dark-robed figure. "I have a vested personal interest."

The boy turned to glare at him. "And just what the fuck does that mean?"

Snape gritted his teeth. This kid really needed to have his mouth scrubbed. "It _means_ that it reminds me of a similar situation," he ground out, his blood boiling as the boy scoffed.

"I'm not supposed to talk about that with anyone besides the Master," the boy said, looking suddenly apprehensive. He paused and looked a quick left-right before finally turning around to face Snape, crossing his arms as he considered him narrowly. Finally, as if overcoming a mental debate, the boy sighed and regarded the trapped Snape with obvious boredom.

"Psh. Whatever. Since I'm stuck in this goddamn dream anyway, might as well let _someone_ know." He glared at Snape again, eyebrow cocked at Snape's dark, trailing robes with open contempt. "Even if that someone is batshit crazy." Snape bristled, but stayed silent. He was still trapped, anyways.

"The guy in black is Ivan Dreyar, Grade A mindfuck extraordinaire and all-around douchebag," the boy said wryly. He looked at Snape for any sign of recognition, but Snape stayed silent, so he continued. "Ivan is the Master of Raven Tail, the only independent Dark Guild in Fiore."

"He is powerful." It was a question phrased as a statement. Snape had a feeling he already knew the answer.

The boy snorted. "He's crazy. Even crazier than you, Mr. Batshit, but his power's the real deal."

Snape bristled. "My name is Severus Snape!"

"Eh. Snake, whatever." He gave a bitter, world-weary laugh. "It's not as if telling you is gonna help me anyways. Having to report back to the old man and shuttle back and forth between them, it's gonna fucking kill me someday, and no one's gonna be any wiser for it." His face was grim and very old, for all that he was just a boy, and Snape felt a very cold chill of recognition race up his spine.

"Tell me," he said, almost a command. "Tell me what happened from the start."

The boy looked up at him, wry and bitter." You sure you want to know, Snake?"

"It's Snape," he gritted out. "And yes."

"Fine," the boy relented. "Oh," he said, as if he'd forgotten. "I'm Gajeel."

* * *

When the boy was done speaking, Snape was silent for a long time. It was difficult, impossible even, to believe the ridiculous story that he'd just heard, but the way the boy – Gajeel – talked, was through the grim lens of personal experience, and his story carried a weight and authenticity that were hard to deny. But he _wanted _to deny it, because there was no possible way that this strange boy from some alternate world could share a story so close to his.

"You're just a boy," he finally spat. "What could you possibly have to fight for." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. Unbidden, he thought of Potter and immediately hated himself (and Potter) for doing so.

Blood-red eyes narrowed, and Gajeel scowled viciously. "You wouldn't fuckin' understand."

"Try me," Snape sneered.

Gajeel pinned him a cold look, face curling into a snarl. "How the hell could you understand having someo…something _good_ to fight for? That…Having something that you'd dirty yourself for over and over, just so that they'd stay clean? This…this feeling of having this debt, so heavy that it can't ever be repaid? Fuck!" Gajeel ran one hand through his hair and looked away, face twisted with anger and bitter, undefinable emotion.

"What debt." Snape's voice had gone flat.

Gajeel looked away, face suddenly touched with shame. "I…did something that I regret, but…I was forgiven. Without her… without that stupid old man and all those other idiots…I would have fallen into the dark." His tone was calm and matter-of-fact, but there was a terror behind the simple words that Snape knew all too well, and he thought of falling into his own darkness, and how no one had been able to lift him out of it until one old man had offered him forgiveness and understanding in exchange for his services. He swallowed tensely, the Leglimens memory he'd seen in Gajeel's mind suddenly taking on new meaning.

"What is her name?" Snape asked simply.

The boy jerked violently with surprise and stared at him with open suspicion and sudden hostility.

"How-?"

Snape remained silent, the question demanding an answer. Finally, the boy dropped his eyes with a grunt of acquiescence.

"Levy. Her name's Levy."

This time it was Snape's turn to jolt in surprise. He stared for a long, tense moment at the boy before looking away. Was this destiny? Some kind of fate playing games with his mind? This was the most realistic and disturbing dream he'd ever had. He would have to start on a fresh batch of Dreamless Sleep when he woke.

"She doesn't know," Snape said, in the steady tone of a statement. Gajeel closed his eyes in resignation.

"No one does. Only the master knows. No one else can do it. No one else would understand."

Snape's lips thinned into a grim line of empathy. There was no guarantee _she _would have understood either, even if she'd known what he'd done for her. Even the _idea_ of associating with the enemy was unfathomable to those who walked in the light.

Dawn was rising above the black mountains in the distance, fingers of light touching the dark sky, and Gajeel turned to look with a strange yearning before returning his attention to Snape.

"I need to go," he said abruptly, getting up and dusting the grass of his pants. Snape watched him leave, a strange mix of emotion and sympathy swirling in his throat. Finally, he spoke.

"Have you told her?"

It was just a simple question, but he saw how Gajeel tensed as if shocked, stopping where he stood.

"No,"Gajeel finally said, a terrible regret coloring his voice. There was a slump to his shoulders, and Snape knew that if things continued as they were, he never would.

"Do it," Snape said, bluntly, surprised with himself. "Tell her before it's too late. Cherish what little time you have together, before she is stolen from you forever."

Gajeel turned and faced him, unreadable emotion flitting like lightning across his face.

"I hurt her," he finally said. "I'm not goo-"

"Don't say it," Snape snapped, surprised at his sudden ferocity. "Don't you dare say it, or you'll start to believe it. You _must_ tell her. You must." A million what-ifs and what-may-have-beens flashed wildly through his mind, his deepest regrets surfacing slowly to haunt him. He wouldn't watch this boy make the same mistakes.

Gajeel looked taken aback, but he grinned and nodded, turning again to walk towards the growing light. He stopped suddenly and turned back, and the steel bindings trapping Snape suddenly disappeared, leaving Snape to collapse forward with an undignified squall which he barely managed to stifle. Sitting up and rubbing circulation back into his wrists, he glared daggers at Gajeel, who was standing framed in the light of dawn. Gajeel smirked, unaffected by the withering stare, head tilted appraisingly at Snape.

"Oi, Snape." He asked, and Snape's mouth quirked in irritation. _Oi _was not a word.

"Was she worth it?" Gajeel asked simply.

Snape's breath caught suddenly in his throat as he thought of all the sacrifice, the torture, the self-loathing caused by agonizing moral decisions made on hairpin twists of hyperrationality and fueled by one madman's sadistic glee. He shut his mouth and thought of Lily's gentle smile and kind green eyes.

"Yes," he found himself saying, almost in a whisper. "She was always worth it."

Gajeel nodded once before turning and striding into the lightening sky.

* * *

Gajeel woke up that day with a raging headache and an irrepressible urge to seek Levy out. He had the feeling that he'd had a strange dream, but of what, he couldn't remember. He did recall a vague feeling of kinship, of understanding on a level that he'd never felt from anyone, not even Lily, but that couldn't be right, because the only kin he'd ever had was Metallicana, and that arrogant bastard was missing, god only knew where. Still. Levy. He got up and swung his legs out of bed. There was something he had to do.

That very afternoon, Gajeel strode into the Guild, and in full view of everyone there, walked straight to Levy and pulled her fiercely to him, pressing his face into her hair and closing his eyes. For now, just for now, with the warmth of her body pressed to his and the sweet honeysuckle of her hair tickling his nose, his world was momentary perfection. He adjusted her in his arms and sighed, cradling the vulnerable nape of her neck in one hand as he trailed his fingers through her hair, knowing with irrevocable, suffusing sweetness, that he would burn the whole fucking world with his soul as kindling for her if she asked him to.

He would take on the darkness, Raven Tail, Ivan, the entire fucking Balam Alliance and any of their innumerable little offshoots. He'd take them all on, again and again and again, as many times as it took, until he knew that she and all she stood for were safe. It was what he had to do as a mage of Fairy Tail. More importantly, it was what he had to do as a _man_, with the knowledge that he was the only one for the job. With a last, reluctant sigh, he let go of Levy abruptly, turned and swept, ignoring the slack jaws and bulging eyes of the entire stupid Guild around him.

The door slammed shut behind him, and with the strange spell broken, Levy tottered on unsteady legs, and clutched a barstool for support. Even Mirajane didn't seem to have anything to say, mouth opening and closing silently in a mix of disbelief and glee. It was Cana who finally broke the silence with a whoop of laughter as she reached out and smacked Levy on the shoulder hard enough to leave her wincing.

"I _told_ you that he was sweet on you!" She crowed.

With that, chaos descended as Natsu, Elfman, Jet and Droy scrabbled with each other to get to Levy and demand details and exact their revenge on Gajeel. Revenge for what, exactly, was something that no one could make out past the din of their furious shouting. Levy blinked and put a trembling hand to her face, ignoring the hubbub around her. Her skin buzzed with a strange light where Gajeel (!) had held her, and the utter disbelief of the moment was still catching up to her. She rubbed her hot face and smiled shyly, secretively. He had been so warm.

Gajeel had kept up his calm walk just until he was outside of the double doors, whereupon he sprinted like mad for the woods, leaving a false trail just far enough into the forest to confuse Natsu's nose before Pantherlily caught up with him. With a grin, he'd had his cat carry him straight back to Fairy Tail, where they sat on the roof and watched a frenzied Natsu, Elfman, Jet and Droy burst out and start seeking. Natsu's nose had twitched in the air, once, twice, and Gajeel had ducked on pure instinct, before Natsu found his false trail and led the way for the screaming idiots.

Gajeel watched their dust storm recede into the forest and snorted with dark amusement. Dimwits. He hoped they'd run into a snake pit on their way to nowhere. Then he looked down, and an unruly halo of blue hair caught his attention.

Levy had come out to see where Jet and Droy had gone, and as she saw that they were long gone, she planted both hands on her hips and he watched her shoulders fall in an exasperated sigh. She turned to head back into the Guild, and then stopped and looked up curiously. Gajeel ducked instinctively, ignoring Lily's calculating gaze.

Somehow, even though there was no way that she could have seen him, hidden as he was behind the slanting roof, she tilted her eyes upwards and smiled, a beautiful, _brilliant _smile that took his breath away, as she hugged herself tight. It was like a sudden ray of sunlight breaking out from between two thunderheads. It lit up his world.

Then she flushed and scolded herself, patting her cheeks vigorously, and the transcendental moment was broken as she made her way back into the Guild, muttering lightly, and Gajeel, feeling distinctly shell-shocked, could only shut his hanging jaw and swallow convulsively, watching as she disappeared into the building. When he sat back, he grimaced at Lily's too-smug expression.

"Levy, huh?" the Exceed asked musingly, and Gajeel batted a hand at him, which he dodged easily.

"Don't even _start_," he hissed at his cat, even as Lily brought a thoughtful paw to his chin, smirking all the while. Then his expression grew solemn, and he fluttered in front of Gajeel to catch his attention.

"Is she worth it?" Lily asked seriously, and Gajeel blinked in surprise, Lily's words overlapping someone else's voice in a strange déjà-vu haze, kindling some latent memory in the back of his mind. He blinked again as the answer came to him as if he'd known it all along.

"Yeah," he said sharply. "She's worth it. She's worth everything."

Lily nodded once and the solemn expression left his eyes, melting into mischief.

"So when are you going to tell her how you feel? You didn't actually _say_ anything, you just hugged her."

Gajeel threw up his hands and turned in a huff so that Lily wouldn't see the flush that had crept up his neck. Stupid cat!

* * *

Severus Snape woke that day with a strange sense of peace.

That day, he did something that he hadn't done for a long time. After classes were over that day, he strode to Hogsmeade and apparated to a place he hadn't been to for a long time. He stopped at a small florist's in Godric's Hollow, and made his way quietly to a gravestone that he hadn't had the courage to visit in several long years.

Standing in front of the grave, he knelt carefully on one knee and rearranged the bouquet in one arm, reaching out reverently to brush the layer of dust away from the name etched on the stone.

Lily Potter.

"Lily," he said quietly, and lay the spray of flowers across the gravestone. He did not look at James Potter's grave right beside him.

He stood up and considered the name for a long time, lost in his memories, his face strangely open as he thought back to simpler times when things had not been so bleak and complicated. Finally, he turned on his heel to leave. At the gate leading out, he stopped and looked back at the lonely spray of flowers across the simple stone.

"You were _always_ worth it," he found himself saying quietly. He put a hand up to his mouth in surprise, stared at the fingers like they weren't his own before shaking his head and closing the gate quietly behind him.

* * *

**A/N** - Guhh, hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I have never written Snape before so I'm very apprehensive about him here! One of the things that really cemented my admiration for Gajeel was his status as double-agent for Ivan and Master Makarov, and the obvious parallels to Snape's situation (c'mon, Levy? Lily? even their names are similar!). I loved that on the surface, Gajeel seemed like just another musclehead, always looking for a fight, but being a double-agent requires street smarts and a cleverness and turn of thought that I don't think someone like Natsu could pull off.

On an unrelated note, sorry about the lack of updates on Ironbound and TSPH, I feel really bad about leaving those two alone for so long (TSPH especially!) but writing has always been harder for me than art, and it takes a lot out of me when I write, which is why it's hard for me to do it at a steady clip when I don't have any inspiration. My sincere apologies ;A;


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